Another family Thanksgiving is in the books. It was another typical awkward get-together with my side of the family. My family knows little about us despite the fact that everyone outside of my grandparents live within 20 minutes of our house. It's a shame really. One of my uncles called Shannon Shawna, and another uncle kept asking me about how it was living in Clarksville. Well, we moved...two years ago. I actually did not eat very much this year. Grandma's cooking was a bit off this time around so one plate was enough for me. We ate very late in the day after Grandpa took over three hours to fry up the turkey at his friend's house. Last time he fried one there it took 30 minutes. I think he was out having a good time away from Grandma. Half of my family smokes and after dinner they are too full to be courteous and smoke outside. Our lungs and eyes can only handle it for so long before we are forced to head home.
I got in several good, hard days on the mountain bike during Thanksgiving week as part of our "Tour de Turkey." I added an extra day this year, bringing it up to five days of practice races. There was a short 2.7-mile time trial on Wednesday, then a four-lap XC on the full Backyard Loop on Thursday morning. I finally got rivets and a cable stop for my busted Racer-X frame, but I had not yet been able to get my Dad's rivet gun, so I was still on the Remedy for the Tour de Turkey. Thursday's XC was a good comparison for me. I did the same four-lap effort back at the beginning of November on the Remedy with very similar trail conditions. I also could compare to last year's Tour de Turkey when I did the same course. Actually, we have added three short sections to the trail since last year. I rode my Racer-X last year as well, and the trail was frozen that day making for some fast riding. So, my times this year should have been a bit slower with me lugging around the big Remedy on a wet and slick trail. I had a good ride and chopped six minutes off my time from early November. I beat my time from last Tour de Turkey by over 19 minutes! That really made me feel good. I knew I was riding better than this time last year, but 19 minutes is a lot of time on a slower bike and trail. Shannon and my Mom also completed Thursday's XC, each doing one full lap in the cold.
Tour de Turkey continued on Friday with a night short track. I got home from work earlier than expected and was able to get started as soon as the sun went down. Shannon was crazy enough to come join me for a night of flying around the backyard in the dark. We had a really good time. the course was tougher than last year, but I again showed signs of improvement with a faster average speed and high average heart rate than last year.
Saturday brought on another longer XC stage, with four full laps on the trail backwards. Riding this way is always a challenge. The trail doesn't flow as well and has some steep climbs going this direction. You have to climb to infamous "Hill of Doom" going backwards, which turns into a run-up. There's no way you can ride this hill with leaves on the trail. You have to carry every single ounce of speed into this hill to have any shot at riding it to the top and the leaves suck up all of you momentum. I did this day alone, as well as Sunday's finale, which was another XC event on a shorter, faster course. After it was all over, I'd say I definitely burned the turkey off this year, plus a little extra.
Speaking of weight, I would like to talk about how much mine has changed over the past year and share a few of the tricks I learned for myself. On November 4 of last year, I finally got fed up with being above race weight and decided that 2014 was going to see me get under the 154-156 lbs. range I had been racing at for the past 4-5 years. It was going to be a big task because I was way up at that point. I was at 166.4 lbs. And I even went up to 167.2 lbs. before the end of the first week. But I stuck with it and steadily lost the weight. I was at 155 by the start of the season and further dropped to 152 by summer. Then ,after my turning point at Crossroads, I continued to drop, seeing 147 while out in Utah. I have not been that light since I was 19 years old! If you look at my heaviest and my lightest day of the year, I went down 20.2 lbs! On November 4 of 2014, exactly one year after putting the axe to the grinder, I was 149.6, down almost 17 lbs. So far in the off-season, I have managed to stay around 151-153 lbs. This time of year is just damage control for me. I am not riding as much, so the burn rate is much lower. I'm also inside more due to the shorter daylight. I eat more when I'm inside and bored. I have found that giving in a little now is better than fighting off every temptation. If I'm a stickler around Christmas, I usually break down later in the winter and start to eat everything, which is much worse because I pack on the pounds just as the season approaches.Going to Indiana is always my biggest challenge, as Shannon's Mom always buys and makes me lots of unhealthy goodies. I have to ride a ton while I'm there just to keep from gaining five pounds in that one weekend. I'm already getting mentally prepared for our trip up after Christmas. It may very well be my biggest hurdle of the entire off-season.
I have learned a lot of things about my eating habits and my body during the past 13 months. Some of these methods may help you, some may be exactly the opposite of what will work for you. We are all different. Our bodies react to foods differently. Our minds handle challenges differently. One of the biggest things I see professional dietitians preach against is counting calories. For most people, they get burned out with it and eventually quit doing it. For me, it works great. Actually, it is the only way I lose weight. In the past, I used the DietPower program on my computer to keep track. It's a great little program that you can enter the nutrient values of all your foods and then log them every day as you eat. It tracks your calories and your weight. One other helpful thing is that it keeps up with nutrient intake as well, which is nice to see so you know you are getting in enough of each nutrient daily, and also keeps you from getting in too much of nutrients like sodium.
I stopped using DietPower for one simple reason: time. It was taking me too long to log my food every day. With the program being on my home computer I was unable to enter my totals until the evening, after work when all my eating was done. Often, I logged my foods only to see that I had gone over on my calories. I needed constant feedback, so I began to keep up with them in my head throughout the day. I kept track of the deficit or excess each day and wrote it down on a magnetic pad on the refrigerator. The public display of my eating meant Shannon could also see how I had done that day and could talk me out of eating something bad later. She annoys me sometimes when I am craving junk food, but she is a lifesaver. She keeps me focused more than she knows.
So, tracking calories was my best route. When I say I have no off switch on my eating, I mean it. If it was not for keeping up with every calorie all the time I would eat until I physically could not eat anymore. That's just the way I am. Some days I think I have a hunger demon inside me. Controlling my eating is definitely harder for me than the actual on-the-bike training. The goal became to lose 10 lbs. on the calorie pad. I knew that 10 lbs. in my head would be more like 15 in real life. It turns out that I was off even more than that. I lost just one single pound on the calorie count, but dropped 17 lbs. in real life. I like that kind of math. Without constant monitoring with scientific equipment, you cannot possibly estimate how much your body is burning. Race intensity skyrockets your burn rate, and that increase in metabolism lasts for hours after the race. I can only guess the race rate and then I just pretend the increase in metabolism after the race doesn't happen, that way I err to the side of replacing less calories rather than too many. This method works well when you have weight to lose, but would not be advisable for someone already at a low weight.
I also shifted to more fruits and veggies. I despise nearly all vegetables. While I love fruit, it is never my first choice for a snack. I am quick to reach for salty items like pretzels or rice cake chips. It has been a shift in my thinking and habits. Snacking while driving has always been a problem. We solved that by replacing my pretzels with grapes. I still got the activity of eating to break up the driving boredom while getting in less calories and giving my body better fuel to run on. Having a garden has helped too as I want to eat everything in it because it was my sweat and time that went into producing it. Eating a bigger lunch helps me as well. Typically, dinner is the meal I overeat on. When I eat bigger lunches, I tend to eat a much smaller dinner. I once heard a talk from a Pro Ironman triathlete about dropping weight. He talked about not eating a big meal after lunch was they key to losing weight. For a long time, I was not sure exactly what he meant, but now I get it.
One other thing we did was make weight loss into a game. A game with consequences that I did not like. Shannon and I came up with kitchen time. For every 100 calories I go over during the day I have to do ten minutes of work in the kitchen the following day. I did well back in the summer, but lately I have been in the kitchen regularly. I absolutely hate washing dishes and cooking food. Shannon loves to cook, but hates cleaning up so that put all the cleaning on me. My recent failures have helped her out a lot. She has only cooked about half of our meals lately and has not washed dishes in a few weeks. She is loving it. I, on the other hand, am getting permanent dish hands. I have been doing time for a while now thanks to an epic failure in portion control at the church ward dinner.
I raced twice this past weekend and will post a report on that in the next blog. Until then, I am heading over to the sink to serve some more kitchen time and work towards paying off my calorie debt. It looks like Shannon has me enslaved for another week, but after I serve this time I'm not getting any more!
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